Flame Away
by valiantmongoose
Summary: Magnus Bane has lived for hundreds of years, searching for a way to distinguish himself against the backdrop of history. As he searches for a purpose, he never stops to consider that what he is is lonely - that is, until a certain blue-eyed Shadowhunter steps into his loft. One shot chronicle of Magnus's life.


**Hello everyone :) I've been thinking about Magnus's immortality and his feelings about how he's spent his life, and I've always wanted to try writing something in 2nd person POV, so this little monster was born. I had a lot of time not studying and writing this, but it is a brand new style, so let me know what you think. It would mean a lot :)**

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"I'm done. I'm old, I'm sad - that's on a good day. I want out of this mess. But I don't want to fade away, I want to flame away - I want my death to be an attraction, a spectacle, a mystery. A work of art."

- Jennifer Egan, _A Visit from the Goon Squad_

* * *

Your earliest memory is fear, fear so palpable you can almost poke it with your stubby fingers, climb over it with your skinned knees. It's fear and disgust and the sign of the cross over your mother's chest as you blink your eyes open to say good morning.

You get the feeling a couple of years later, from your quiet perch in the barn, that your parents aren't really playing a game when they say _go hide in the hay, we'll see how quiet you can be. _The first, second, tenth time you're so excited you're wriggling with it, nearly upsetting the little bird's nest that's cradled above you on the window, but no one comes. The neighbors and their children sit and drink the tea your mother's prepared and comment on the flowers, the cleanliness, the large cross your father's carved for the front room, and you just watch and wait from above. _Don't you ever wish for children?_ you hear one night as the neighbors walk away. Your mother's eyes flicker to the barn, right to where she's known you hide all along. _It just wasn't God's plan for us._ And if you weren't God's plan, you wonder, then whose plan were you?

The answer comes early one morning, when you're going to milk the cows. The cows are your best friends, soft and warm and ever tickling your hands with soft snuffles. You're carrying an empty bucket and singing a song you heard some of the younger children chant as you whittled your name into a beam, high above them. The doors fall open and you see her there – your mother, only blue and bloated with a tongue like a dead fish, and you scream and scream. He finds you there, on the ground next to a pile of your own sick, your father – or _NOT YOUR FATHER, DEMON! – _and he sobs and rages and you barely feel the pain until the bucket finds your head and everything is silent. When you wake, with mottled skin to match your heart, you know whose plan you were; it echoes in your head like the clangs of metal against the barn floor: demon, demon, demon.

Your mother is buried beneath the tree behind your small house and you search through the forest for hours to find the flowers she likes, the blue ones your father (stepfather) used to gather into crowns to place in her hair, but you never get to lay them on the grave. He grabs you before you can put them there, crushing them beneath his boots as he drags you bodily to the creek. Everything is too fast, too loud, to agonizing, and you don't realize what's happened until there's a pile of ash in front of you, and a smell you'll never forget. You want to get sick again, but you force it away. You're ten years old now, and there's no time to be a baby.

It's a harsh thing at any age, to know that there's no one alive to miss you. You can become anything you want, or nothing. You discard the name they gave you, throw into the wind that snaps at your bare feet. No matter how hungry you are, you can't seem to catch food. No matter how wet you are, you can't bring back the fire. You don't know if you'll starve first, or be eaten by the animals you hear creeping around you in the dark of night, but whichever it is, you know you deserve it. Demon.

The end has almost arrived when the monks find you, wet and shivering with fever, just outside the abbey. They too make the sign of the cross as you pad across the room, silent and sullen, but they do not seem to fear you. They let you milk the cows and sometimes you can get lost in the soft familiarity until you forget. You learn a new emotion – pity – but they let you drink the warm milk and they teach you to write and you find that there are worse things.

Several years pass and an old monk comes to visit. He has a new word: Warlock. So you're not a demon, just born of one. He has stories, of blue fire and blood and beasts with jagged claws and the devil's hooves, and he calls for cleansing fire. He gives you a name, a warning for future acolytes, to be written on the register after your ashes have been carried to hell. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, an omen for any who plan the same thing in the years that follow. Magus Bane.

You leave the island, hopefully to never return. You have one _hell _of a teenage rebellion, burning and stealing your way across Europe with no consequences and no remorse. You're seventeen when it finally catches up to you, in the back of a dimly lit tavern. You're drunk and showing off, the bright sparks skittering across your table as the proprietor asks for payment. When he doesn't back down you lower your hood and he falls back in fear, making the cross you know so well. It's like a fan, flaming the heat of your hatred. You continue to drink in peace until there's a tap on your shoulder and a beautiful woman asks you to take a walk outside. You smirk and saunter across the floor, but in reality you have no idea what to do with a woman. You've barely spoken to anyone outside the monastery, and forcing someone's company in that way is beyond the mayhem you've been causing. The woman leads you away from the tavern and you feign nonchalance as your palms start to sweat and you're considering knocking her out with a snap of your fingers. Before you can she turns, and in the blue light of the moon you see ebony wings spilling from beneath her cloak, and then you're pinned.

Bright red rings are pinning your arms to your sides and you cannot free yourself through any amount of force, physical or otherworldly. She snaps at you in a harsh, guttural language, and then sighs when you gape wordlessly. With a snap of her fingers you can understand and she's shaking her head. _You really know nothing, do you sweetling? _You burn with anger and it crackles against her shackles, but this just makes her laugh. _So you want to learn magic, hmm? _She lets you go with another snap and you're pretty sure you could make a run for it, you're pretty good with invisibility by now, but she just walks away like she knows you'll follow, and of course you do. You've known you would all along.

Apparently there are rules to this Warlock mess and the consequences you've been flouting for so long are starting to catch up. Freyja goes about teaching them to you as quickly and inhumanely as possible. You fall in love so fast you wonder if she's even real. The bruises and burns that cover your torso help convince you that she is. You master magic quicker than most, and this fact brings you more joy than thieving and destruction ever could. You start to feel like you have somewhere to belong. You've never belonged to anyone or anything before.

In two years you're ready to complete the trial. Your pride burns bright, and blazes into an inferno with Freyja's small smile. She'll be yours, you vow, once you're the youngest Warlock in history to pass the trials. Nineteen forever seems like a gift in your youthful ignorance.

When you get back to the house, elated, she's gone. The others tell you that it's for the best, that she couldn't be what you wanted, and her small smile is tucked away in the back of your mind like a secret. After a hundred years it's still there and the sight of red sparks claws through your heart like talons. You decide love isn't for you anyway.

There are other women, then men, and while you eventually become as skilled in this last aspect of your life as you are in all others, you never allow yourself to care. There's a boy in Poland at the turn of the nineteenth century, with blue eyes and a crooked smile, who looks at you like you're everything and believes the same. One night he rolls into you, his soft hair spilling across your chest and you think that you could wake up next to him forever. You're gone by morning.

You never stay for more than one night until you attend a vampire gala in France decades later. Camille is the most beautiful woman you've ever seen and has a heart chipped from ice and steeped in venom. Her voice is like music and her soul is a toxin and you know you could never love her. You do anyway, though she never loves you back. It matters less than you thought it would, pricks a little at your heart, but never punctures.

You manage to get caught up in Shadowhunter affairs, something you convinced yourself would never happen. Still, these are not as arrogant as most, and black-haired Will sparks something inside you'd thought you'd lost. Their struggles resonate with you in a way nothing has for some time, and once you've seen them through you're ready for a new adventure. You're ready to make a difference. To write your name into history.

History fast becomes a horror story. Humans – frail, delicate, beautiful humans become more demonic than those from the underworld. The first war passes in a haze of blood and gunfire and you feel so old, so defeated. Then the second war comes and you're outraged. The camps are opened and humans are herded like cattle and you long for blood. A simple spell and it all could end. You could change the course of history. You prepare the necessary portal and are about to step through, only to find yourself bound in red magic.

_You know you cannot interfere_. She hasn't changed, not in centuries, and you suppose she may think the same of you. She'd be wrong. You let the magic fizzle out and take your time admiring her. The curve of her back, the delicate expanse of her wings. Her lips are red and full and you're surprised to find that she was right. It no longer hurts. You still cherish that small smile, though. You always will. _You've done great things_, she murmurs that night in the fog between waking and sleep. _Not great enough_, you whisper to the cadence of her sleeping breath.

You keep pushing the boundaries of your magic. Other warlocks start to notice. They think that maybe you're too dangerous to have around. Having enemies makes you happy; a man is only as powerful as his greatest enemy. One attempt, then two, and now all Downworlders know to leave you alone. You become High Warlock of Brooklyn and you're too busy being sorry that this is all you've accomplished that it doesn't feel like an accomplishment at all.

Your life changes. Shadowhunters start an uprising and you're called upon to make a difference. A second chance to set your name in the annals of time. Instead, you're abducted by a werewolf and a rogue Shadowhunter. You consider leaving them, but you've always had a soft spot for the truly desperate.

Fifteen years pass in a haze of faerie drinks and magic drugs. The money keeps piling up and you've become like mundane reality television celebrities: scrambling with false bravado and pretending not to notice that everyone's waiting for you to crash and burn. You never go to bed alone and you never wake up with company. The centuries carry the weight of millennia and you think that maybe you're lonely. Lonely and a pale reflection of everything you once thought you could be.

When new Shadowhunters come looking for help you're determined not to get involved. Meddling with mortals, angel-blessed or not, can only lead to trouble. You try to shock them into leaving, throw out snatches of your sordid past, but you're met with the one thing you're not expecting: compassion.

You hadn't even noticed the blue-eyed Nephilim – Alec – standing near the back. His clothes, his hair, his posture having been crafted with an express purpose in mind: invisibility. You look at him and you think you see something you recognize.

At first you convince yourself that it's fun. You've never corrupted a young shadowhunter, and this one just seems too easy. He puts you on edge, he is the first thing that makes you feel off balance since that first small smile. He comes back alone and you kiss him, just to prove you can. But then he kisses back and your heart stutters briefly in your chest. Something reignites that you thought had been eternally dampened.

He ignores you and you rage, at him and yourself. You tell yourself you don't care when he runs after his parabatai like a dog after its master. You see the way he looks at Jace and you wish that was how he looked at you. But you don't give up hope. You recognize this look, you wore it once as you watched the red sizzle of magic illuminate a beautiful face.

He almost dies and you know that if he does, he'll be taking the last part of you with him.

You fight with him, fight for him, and in a fit of pique reminiscent of your adolescence you tell him that you love him. It's worth it, in the end. He kisses you and nothing else matters.

The battle is over. There is heartbreak and you wish there was magic powerful enough to make his pain your own. You know eventually it will fade, as all things must, and for the first time in your life you truly know fear. His pain will fade, but so too will his love, either with time or with death, and you'll be left alone to wander the world. You try so hard to remember what you wanted to do with eternity, but all that you find is his name.

He's the one that suggests a trip. _Some time alone would be nice_, he says, biting his lip and having no earthly idea what his mere presence does to you. _I know a place_, you answer. You know a perfect place.

It's not hard to find. You would know it if you lived long enough to see the mountains crumble and oceans turn to dust. You never forget your home. You don't tell him what happened here, about days of training, of soaking up magic like it was a drug. Of that feeling of belonging. You don't tell him, but he knows.

Water laps against the shore just outside the house, a gentle hum that does nothing to ease your singing nerves. He undresses in pieces, wriggling out of his clothes while under the blankets, nodding when you ask _are you sure?_ Kissing your mouth, your jaw, your neck, until your chest tightens and breathing becomes secondary to just having _this_ forever. You fit together perfectly, and he's shaking in your arms and you feel naked for the first time.

Later, after he's dozed off, you remain awake, running your fingers over his side, brushing your lips against his hair, ensuring that he remains tucked in your arms. You stay awake and you try to think about the centuries you've lived, the choices you've made, and everything you thought you were waiting for. He shifts in his sleep and his hair tickles your neck. You shiver and you know. After all this time you've found it, that elusive purpose. You've found what fame, or wealth, or power could never provide. After nearly four hundred years of living, you're finally alive.

_There it is,_ you sigh, finally content_. There you are, Alexander. _


End file.
